Fairly Odd Parents: Breakin' Da Rules (PS2) Review

 The Fairly Oddparents: Breakin’ Da Rules (PS2) 4/10

Hello everyone and welcome to another game review. Today, let’s take a look at a licensed game from one of my favorite TV shows growing up. Fairly Oddparents: Breakin’ Da Rules was released on November 3, 2003 for the Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox. The game was developed by Blitz Games Studios and published by THQ. The game did alright in terms of sales, with a few people claiming this to be a hidden gem from the console generation.

Personally, this has got to be one of the worst, most disappointing games I have played in recent years. Breaking Da Rules is a terrible platformer and Blitz Games should be ashamed of the product that they released to the world. I was expecting a similar experience to the far superior Shadow Showdown game that was released a year later and seeing the general consensus of the game, I was expecting something at least halfway decent, but nope. Strap yourselves in because I’m going to be ripping this apart. Let’s begin.

Our story follows the Fairly Odd Parents trio Timmy Turner and his Fairy Godparents Cosmo and Wanda. One weekend, Timmy’s parents leave for a “business trip” and Vicky is left in charge. Timmy, freaking out, wishes that Cosmo and Wanda didn’t have to follow Da Rules. In the whole commotion, the trio loses Da Rules and Vicky grabs the book. Because of this, Vicky now has all the wishing power that Cosmo and Wanda have. After a brief trip to Fairy Court, the trio now has 49 and a half hours to get Da Rules back, one page at a time. The trio then sets off to fix their problem and if they don’t, Cosmo and Wanda will lose their fairy license.

Plot is simple, easy to follow, and pretty straight forward, just like the television series. The whole game reminds me of an extended episode of the show, except without all of the wacky animation and weird art style to help carry it. There’s 10 levels within the game (if you count the tutorial). Each level represents a wish Vicky makes that Timmy has to fix, all the while collecting Da Rules’ pages. The levels are “A Badge Too Far” that deals with the Squirrely Scouts, “Chinless Blunder” with the Crimson Chin, “The Vicky Virus” with the hard-as-balls game that Timmy wished for in that one episode, “Mini Timmy” where he goes microscopic to clean the bathtub, “Crash Landing” which deals with the Yugo-potamian aliens, “Bad Luck 101” which deals with the Anti-Fairies at the school, “Time Warped” in which Timmy has to fix history which Vicky had wished to be like her incorrect homework, “A Dog’s Life” where Timmy has been turned into a dog and can’t return back to normal because Tootie has fallen in love with the dog version of Timmy, and the final level is “The Ultimate Challenge” where Timmy has to fight a dragon version of Vicky and get her to say “I Wish I Never Took The Book From Timmy” (hint hint on how to beat her). All of these levels had cool concepts in which they were all ripped straight from the show in one form or another. The levels themselves though were either really easy or terribly designed. I’ll get into this in a little bit.

Before I start ripping this game apart, let’s talk about the good things about it. First and possibly the best part of the game is the aesthetic and overall look of the game. Sure the graphics are severely outdated, but there’s a certain charm to it. Another good aspect about the game is the music. Each and every stage has its own unique theme. Sure these themes can get annoyingly repetitive, but I found myself jamming out to a couple of these tracks. Imo, I’d have to say either “Chinless Blunder”, “Crash Landing”, or “A Dog’s Life” had the best background music. Whenever you start up the game, you’ll hear the intro music from the show play, which instantly puts me in a good mood. I like that the original voice actors were a part of this, which helped bring this game to life and the banter between the trio was good. Although I will say that there are instances where everyone’s laughing and you’re just sitting there, ears bleeding, waiting for each character to get through their laughing segment.

Now let’s talk about the horrible things about this game. The very first thing that I noticed with this game is the sound quality. The audio for this game is so bad that it sounds like you need to pop your ears when you're flying in an airplane. I even checked my PS2 to see if the cords were connected all the way (seeing as I didn’t have this problem with Persona 4). Sure you can hear and understand everything properly, but the quality is just terrible.

The second thing I noticed were the controls. Firstly, Idk wtf is up with most of these old platformers, but they usually have the x-axis camera inverted. Why tf would they do this! It makes no sense to have it like this. I had to retrain my brain to invert the x axis so that I can play properly. Secondly, the controls are so bad. Like this is probably the worst part about the whole game. I eventually got used to them, but here’s the problem. Timmy doesn’t feel right whenever you move him. Because of his massive head, jumping up stairs is a huge chore to do. Example: during the level “Bad Luck 101”, there’s a small section where you have to race through an obstacle course that’s made out of playground equipment before the gate closes. The very first thing you gotta do is jump up the stairs to a slide. Due to Timmy’s massive head, you can’t go right next to the step and start jumping like a normal platformer. If you do that, he’ll bump his head on the invisible wall and bounce back. You have to back up a little bit before you can jump up to the next step. I wasted so much time on these fucking steps that I probably would’ve beaten the level in that amount of time.

Level design is dog shit in this game. It’s either way too easy, way too convoluted, or just straight up trash. My favorite level (design wise) has to be “Chinless Blunder”. Actually, that might just be my favorite level in the game. Imo, this was the best level as it was the most consistent with its design choices. Before I go any further with the gameplay, let me break down the levels. Level starts, exposition, platforming, chase 5 wish stars so that you can make a wish to continue through the level, repeat 1-2 more times. These levels are really basic and straightforward. You’ll only get “lost” when you're hunting for the Crimson Chin cards (I’ll get to this in a little bit). Anyway, the only levels to mix up this monotony were “The Vicky Virus”, “Chinless Blunder”, and “A Badge Too Far”. Wait a minute. I just noticed that these are the first levels of the game, which help reel you in to this mess of a game. Enemies are either dumb af that completely ignore you (like the knights from “Time Warped”) or a massive pain in the ass to deal with (like the germs from “Mini Timmy”). There’s also save points throughout the levels. These are actually placed decently well. Not as bad as Jak 2, but a couple of these save points could’ve been placed better.

So within each level are 4 Crimson Chin Cards. These cards are basically like Pokemon cards that Timmy collects. They’re scattered throughout each level and there’s 33 to collect in total. These cards are “hidden” in each level and you usually have to go out of your way to collect them. These aren’t difficult to find and collect by any means, but there were 2 that eluded me. One from “Time Warped” and one from “A Dog’s Life”. These were actually placed quite well seeing that with the rest of them I was able to collect them within my first run of the level. As you collect the cards, the game will reward you with bonus content: short clips from the show. If you collect all 33 Crimson Chin Cards, then you unlock a whole episode. I won’t spoil the episode if any of you want to see what it is, but that episode made the whole game for me as it’s one of my favorite episodes from the series. Watching through all the clips brought a wave of nostalgia over me that brought me more entertainment than the game itself.

Anyway, I’ve been talking about this game way longer than I thought I would, so I’ll end it here. If you ever find this game and are interested in it, please be aware that it’s not a good game compared to, imo, the far superior game Shadow Showdown. Honestly, now that I think about it, all the problems with the game could’ve been fixed if it was polished.  At the end of my journey, I dropped roughly 10 hours into it. I always saw this game everywhere and I was very interested in seeing what it held. The only reason why I was even able to go for the 100% completion was because it’s Fairly Oddparents. I love this show and playing through it helped me remember and appreciate the show even more, even if the game was a slog to play through.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.